The absolute best advice I ever got was "Don't look for jobs or work on your resume or write cover letters or even contact people right away. Give yourself a week or two off, possibly even three."
Of course, every time I got this advice, I ignored it. And paid the price!
The problem with throwing yourself immediately into a job search is that your self esteem is at its lowest. You are panicking and you are not thinking. You may call contacts or write cover letters and sound like you are whining or desperate. This is why it's best to take a breather, relax, recoup. Be kind to yourself. The job search will be there when you are ready for it!
So if you can afford it (and it sounds like you can), encourage your bf to take a break. Even call it a vacation. Encourage him to do nothing at all about the job search for awhile, and just relax, enjoy his hobbies, do whatever he's been putting off around the house.
This doesn't mean you let him coast forever. It just means take a break to recharge. Grieve. (Job loss is akin to death of a loved one).
I don't know about your state, but ours extended bennies so unemployment goes a full year now. Add in severance and any unused vacation time, you realize you do have time and the situation isn't quite as dire as you may think. And the economy is improving, albeit slowly.
Rule of thumb, I've heard, is that for every $10K you seek to make, it takes a month. So if he is looking to make $50K, it'll take 5 months. Now add to that a slowed economy. You could double that. I am not telling this to you to scare you and make you panic, but to put it into perspective, what is reasonable amount of time to expect it'll take.
I could probably give you a million tips, LOL. I'll just add one more: the reality is - after the initial few weeks - it doesn't take hours and hours each day to search for a job. The first few weeks you answer months' worth of job listings, and you are busy crafting the perfect resume. Then after that, you are only answering the one or two that are new for that day. Add to that, reaching out to one contact in his network per day with a phone call, perhaps meeting for lunch. It just doesn't take 8 hours. One or two hours, tops.
So if you come home and find he's sprawled out in front of the t.v., or if he's sleeping in late every morning, don't be too hard on him. Do encourage him to workout, focus on his hobbies, get out of the house, run errands, cook dinner, etc.... any thing to help fill his day in the other 6 hours he has free.... humans like to be busy and productive.
Finally, please tell him for me that every time I've been laid off, I thought it was the end of the world. And every time, I eventually landed in a much better place. Often in a direction I hadn't imagined. But better nonetheless.
